The present invention relates to image production, and in particular to the production of images representative of combinations of three-dimensional pieces.
Design of products can be very expensive when prototypes for consumer testing are used to determine whether or not to actually develop products. In the dry cereal products industry, several production runs of a new type of cereal are made, and then photographed in a bowl or spoon. These photographs are referred to as bowl and spoon shots. The shots are then shown to consumers to determine whether or not cereal that looks like the cereal in the shots has appeal, and might be something that consumers would purchase. Similar shots are used to determine the appeal of ready to eat grain based snack foods.
A problem with this approach is that quite often equipment such as specific dies must be designed and built in order to produce the desired product. A pilot plant or small-scale cereal production system must also be run to produce the cereal for each shot. Many times several attempts must be made in order to get the desired color, shape and appearance. This is time consuming, and also expensive. Another problem is that the technology may not be developed yet and may not be worth the time and money just to see if consumers will like the product. Sub-optimal, less innovative products will be substituted instead.
One approach to obtaining pictures has been to draw them by hand, or by use of sophisticated electronic drafting tools or computer aided design tools. It is extremely difficult to obtain a drawing which is accurately representative of a spoon shot or a bowl shot. It is also time consuming. It is difficult to anticipate how multiple pieces will actually combine together. Thus, any such pictures are not likely to be a realistic representation of the combination of pieces in a container such as a spoon or bowl.
There is a need to obtain a high quality picture which realistically represents a combination of pieces in a container. There is a need to produce such a picture without actually producing physical pieces. There is a further need to obtain such pictures quickly and inexpensively for many different types of pieces and containers.
A set of computer tools provides the ability to computer generate representations of a three-dimensional piece and produce a representation of a combination of such pieces on a flat surface or in a container. In one embodiment, the pieces are pieces of cereal or grain based snack foods, and the container is a bowl or spoon. The representation is an image, such as a bowl shot or spoon shot showing multiple pieces that have been dropped into the container. The multiple pieces may be identical, or may be randomized. Further, multiple different types of pieces may be created, and each one randomized to create pieces for the container shot.
The tools enable a user to create a wide variety of cereal pieces in various settings in a short amount of time. They allow the user to create new pieces with an infinite variety of shapes, textures, colors, and coatings. Users can create replicas of existing pieces, which can then be modified. Users can also create new pieces from scratch, either in a three-dimensional or a two-dimensional format. The two-dimensional piece can then be operated on by tools such as a puff tool which essentially puffs the two-dimensional representation into a three-dimensional representation. Pieces can be created that exceed current manufacturing techniques to help determine from consumer feedback if modifications to the techniques to produce the pieces is worth the effort.
Once a piece is created, multiple shaper tools can be used to bend, twist and create shearing effects such as those created by a die knife to make the pieces even more realistic. A flake tool provides the ability to create cereal flakes from a simple two-dimensional representation. A coating tool is used to create and modify a variety of coatings that are applied on top of cereal pieces to create frost, glaze and particulates.
When getting ready to render a container shot, multiple pieces are created and provided to a bowl shot set of modules. The pieces are randomized in size and shape as desired. The bowl shot modules receive the pieces and simulate them being dropped into the desired container by modeling actual effects of gravity and interaction of the pieces with each other and the container. In one embodiment, the container is provided with a false bottom. The depth of the bottom is determined such that two images generated, one with and one without the false bottom provide substantially the same impression. A false bottom can save significant time in replicating and placing cereal pieces into the container as well as in rendering the container shot.
In a further embodiment, the container shot, or computer rendered image is as photorealistic as possible. In other words, it really looks like a bowl of pieces of cereal. These shots are actually used to test whether or not a cereal is appealing to consumers. An iterative process is used to modify the computer rendered image based on successive rounds or cycles of obtaining consumer feedback. Performing this process without actually producing cereal saves significant time, effort and expense. The resulting shot can even be used by engineers to modify cereal producing machinery and processes to produce a real cereal product that appears like the cereal in the shot.
While these shots are very photorealistic, it should be noted that very subtle differences can be discerned upon close inspection. Color and texture variation within a piece may not be as random as that of real cereal pieces, and there may be some detectable patterns within the computer rendered cereal pieces. There may also be some penetration between objects, however minimal. Further, lighting and shadowing variations may be detected where photographs of other objects that have been brought into the shot may have different lighting. If milk is not computer rendered in the shot, the cereal pieces will not cast natural reflections onto the milk. Further, some pieces may appear to be floating or in an unnatural position compared to real cereal pieces that have been settled due to gravitational forces. These characteristics are very minor, and do not affect the realistic nature of the rendered shots. To eliminate them would require significantly higher computer resources, which even if used, would not completely eliminate them. Thus, the rendered shots are sufficiently photorealistic to serve for consumer testing, and represent a tradeoff between absolute accuracy versus the use of more and more computer system resources.